Talent market intelligence
The research layer for the talent economy.
AIRecruiter.co is the independent research firm for talent leaders. We track how the world hires, where talent moves, and the technology reshaping the market, and we put a verifiable source under every number. AI in hiring is one beat, not the whole story.
Evaluating AI recruiters? What they do and what works →
116 sourced statistics · 200 cited sources · no number we cannot point you to.
Median time to fill, nonexecutive roles
SHRM's benchmark for ordinary (nonexecutive) requisitions, the figure most hiring teams actually plan against. Executive roles run longer, at a median of 45 days.
01The AIRecruiter.co Index
One index. Three parts.
Everything we publish rolls up into one index with three parts: the trackers that follow the market year by year, the statistics distilled from our reports, and the research behind them. Every number sits on a chain of evidence you can follow all the way down to a primary source.
Trackers
6 key metrics, measured the same way every year since 2000. The long-run shape of the talent market, from official Bureau of Labor Statistics series, with a graph for each.
Open the trackersStatistics
Headline numbers distilled from our deep-dive reports, each wired up to its primary source and down to the report behind it, with an honest confidence label. Search, filter, compare.
Open the statisticsResearch
The deep-dive reports the figures come from: full analysis, method, and the evidence trail behind every claim, grounded in dozens of cited primary sources.
02In numbers
The talent market, in numbers you can trace.
A sample of the Index. Every figure carries an honest confidence label, verified, reported, or modeled, and links straight to its primary source. We separate what is measured from what is estimated, and we tell you which is which.
Median time to fill, nonexecutive roles
SHRM's benchmark for ordinary (nonexecutive) requisitions, the figure most hiring teams actually plan against. Executive roles run longer, at a median of 45 days.
Down from 44 days in 2025.
Applications per hire
It now takes roughly 291 applications to make one hire, a flood that reshapes screening economics.
Tripled from about 100 in early 2021.
Recruiters expecting skills-based hiring to be a priority
Three in four talent professionals expect skills-based hiring to be a priority for their organization over the next 18 months, a clear signal of the shift away from credential-led selection.
Companies using freelancers or contractors
Roughly 76% of companies now use freelancers or contractors to build more adaptable teams, though the figure lacks a traceable primary survey.
Candidates abandoning an AI interview process
38% of candidates have walked away from a hiring process because it included an AI interview, with another 12% saying they would.
Global staffing market size
Staffing Industry Analysts sized the global staffing market at roughly $620 billion in 2024 and expects 2025 to come in essentially flat, held back by trade and macroeconomic drag.
Essentially flat against 2024, and still below the $648B 2022 peak.
03The trackers
The talent market, tracked since 2000.
6 key metrics, measured the same way every year through two recessions, a pandemic, and the tightest hiring market on record. Official Bureau of Labor Statistics series, pulled from FRED, every point traceable.
Job openings rate
Open jobs as a share of all filled-plus-open positions. The cleanest read on how hungry employers are to hire.
- Peak
- 6.9% ’22
- Low
- 1.9% ’09
- 2001
- 3.2%
JOLTS begins in December 2000, so this series starts in 2001. The 2021-2022 spike to 6.9% was the tightest hiring market on record.
Annual average, 2001-2025 · United States · 2026 is the latest reading (August 2026), not a full-year average.
Quits rate
The share of workers voluntarily quitting each month. It is a confidence gauge: people quit when they believe they can do better.
- Peak
- 2.8% ’22
- Low
- 1.3% ’09
- 2001
- 2.2%
The 2021-2022 peak (2.8%) was the Great Resignation. The slide to 1.9% marks a cooler, employer-favored market.
Annual average, 2001-2025 · United States · 2026 is the latest reading (August 2026), not a full-year average.
Cost of talent
Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers: the going price of labor, and the budget line every hiring plan runs into.
- Peak
- $31.34 ’25
- Low
- $14.01 ’00
- 2000
- $14.01
Nominal wages more than doubled over the span, so most of that rise is inflation rather than real purchasing power: read it as the cash cost of a role, not as workers getting twice as well off. The 2020 jump is partly a composition effect: lower-paid workers left payrolls first, lifting the average.
Annual average, 2000-2025 · United States · 2026 is the latest reading (September 2026), not a full-year average.
04The market map
The recruiting and talent-tech market, mapped.
12 categories across 4 stages of the hiring funnel, from attracting candidates to operating the function. Open the market map to explore every vendor.
Attract & Engage
Recruitment Marketing & Job Distribution
10Programmatic job advertising, career sites, and distribution to boards and aggregators.
Employer Brand & Talent CRM
4Talent pipelines, nurture campaigns, events, and employer-brand content management.
Source & Discover
Sourcing & Candidate Discovery
14Find and contact passive candidates across the open web and professional networks.
Talent Intelligence & Market Mapping
8Labor-market data, talent supply, competitor mapping, and workforce planning.
Assess & Select
AI Screening & Matching
8Resume parsing, candidate ranking, and AI matching of applicants to open roles.
Skills Assessments & Coding
10Technical, cognitive, and role-specific assessments, including live and async coding tests.
Interview Intelligence
4Interview recording, structured guides, scorecards, and conversation analytics.
Background & Verification
8Background checks, identity, references, and credential and right-to-work verification.
Hire & Operate
05Latest research
Research the market, not the marketing.
Reports, market maps, and buyer guides written by analysts, grounded in data, and free of vendor influence.
AI Interviewers: The 2026 Guide for Hiring Teams
How AI interviewers work, what a 70,000-application field experiment found, what they cost, the 2026 laws, and how to pilot one without losing candidates.
AI Recruiting Statistics 2026: The Definitive Index
The definitive index of AI recruiting statistics for 2026: 75+ figures on adoption, ROI, the vendor market, fraud, and bias, each tied to a primary source.
Agentic AI Recruiters: The 2026 Deep Guide
A first-principles guide to autonomous AI recruiting agents in 2026: what they actually automate, the real players and funding, honest ROI, and where they break.
06Our method
Research at the speed of the market, with the rigor of a source list.
We use AI to cover a market this large: to ingest filings, funding data, product changes, and thousands of practitioner signals. Then analysts verify, reconcile conflicting figures into one canonical number, and label what is measured versus estimated. The result is a research base you can audit.
Sourced
Every figure links to a real, resolvable primary source. No source-name-only claims.
Reconciled
Conflicting headline numbers are resolved into one canonical stat, with the variants noted.
Labeled
Each number is tagged verified, reported, or modeled. We never inflate confidence.
07Who we serve
For everyone betting on talent.
Talent & TA leaders
Benchmark your function and choose tools with evidence, not vendor decks.
Recruiting & search agencies
Track the market you sell into and the tools that move placement rates.
HR-tech operators
Know your category, your competitors, and where the white space is.
Investors & analysts
Diligence the talent-tech landscape with independent market data.
The Talent Market Pulse
The numbers that moved, once a month.
A monthly read on the talent market for talent leaders, agency operators and investors: the newest research and the data points that shifted, with a verifiable source under every one.
Your watchlist
Track the numbers that move your decisions.
The research is free to read. Create a free account to build your watchlist: save the statistics you follow and open a personal, always-current view of just those numbers. Or request a briefing and we will walk your team through the data behind a specific decision.
- Save any figure from the Index to your watchlist
- A dashboard focused on the metrics you follow
- Every figure still linked to its primary source
Request a briefing
For employers, agencies, and investors with a specific question.